The Steampunk World
I was hanging out in Da Mare Plaza on Sunday, waiting to go to a wall-building party, watching some workers assemble about 300 xmas trees into one giant one. A kindly old one-armed gentleman informed me that in Da Mare Sr's time, the tree would have been twice as big, a stunning thought since this one is easily five stories high. I suggested that perhaps his impression came from the fact that he was twice as short then, and he chuckled heartily, with that old man laugh that I can't wait to develop.
I peered into the tree, hoping to see the framework that held the trees in place, but instead all I could see were the bright l lights of some sort of command center! It was a room in the center of the tree, filled with switches and such. A trip around the circumference revealed that Santa's Workshop was cleverly nestled against the base of the tree, and there was a door in the back of the place where Santa will sit and listen to brats whine about the crap they want that they don't deserve and will discard by December 26th. Obviously this is Santa's secret command center! The tree must be equipped with some sort of device that beams the spirit of xmas out to the city: "Parents... if you don't buy your kids things, you don't love them... kids, if your parents don't buy you stuff, they don't love you... you are obligated to buy meaningless junk for your friends and coworkers, not because you care about them, but just so you don't appear selfish... you must gather with your family and get into the same old fights... if you are not happy this month, it is because you are an evil person... " and so on and so forth.
The crap was in the stores before Halloween, and Target has smeared an ad campaign around the city for at least that long (a remarkable ad presence for a chain with only one location in town). The official opening of the xmas shopping season on the Mag Mile was Saturday. Yes, it's in the air, the Shittiest Time Of Year. Back in my day xmas was in December! I've been tracking it over the last few years, and it seems to creep forward by about two weeks a year. So, if the stores this year switched over in late October (allowing the official stuff to begin a mere week before Thanksgiving and thus appear conservative), that means it will take 20 years or so before xmas is year-round, though I predict it will never breach January because that's the post-xmas sale season. And why shouldn't it be year-round? If people bought year-round with the frenzy that they do in the last two months of the year, retailers could increase their sales by at least a factor of 10! That's the thought at least that puts xmas crap in the stores in October. But of course it won't work that way, it never does. The Golden Rule of marketing, after all, is that 97% of people will ignore you, 2% will hate you, and 1% will buy. It's that mentality, that search for the 1% of stimulus-response buyers, that has brought you the big pile of junk mail in your mailbox, the spam in your email inbox, the pop-ups on the page you're browsing, and that same damn commercial twice every commercial break during your show. And fucking xmas crap shoved in your face from October 20th until December 25th.
So it's time for me to go into hiding. Sorry, Simpsons, I can't even take a half an hour of TV any more. Not like football won't preempt you anyway. Sorry, restaurants, looks like I'll be eating ethnic food for the next month- or until you take that damn tinsel down. Sorry, stores, I won't be buying anything from you, not as a boycott (like I could oppose the crush of consuming), but just because your decor and piped-in music makes me want to retch.
There are two good things about xmas, though, and one of them is the fact that there are tons of opportunities to make a boatload of money on xmas day by working when everybody wants to be with their families. I've made $250 on xmas day- it's like the golden reward for putting up with the inescapable crap for three months (note that you could not pay me $250 a day to live in America after Halloween, so it's more of a consolation prize). The other is the chance to get dressed up like Santa and fuck shit up.
I peered into the tree, hoping to see the framework that held the trees in place, but instead all I could see were the bright l lights of some sort of command center! It was a room in the center of the tree, filled with switches and such. A trip around the circumference revealed that Santa's Workshop was cleverly nestled against the base of the tree, and there was a door in the back of the place where Santa will sit and listen to brats whine about the crap they want that they don't deserve and will discard by December 26th. Obviously this is Santa's secret command center! The tree must be equipped with some sort of device that beams the spirit of xmas out to the city: "Parents... if you don't buy your kids things, you don't love them... kids, if your parents don't buy you stuff, they don't love you... you are obligated to buy meaningless junk for your friends and coworkers, not because you care about them, but just so you don't appear selfish... you must gather with your family and get into the same old fights... if you are not happy this month, it is because you are an evil person... " and so on and so forth.
The crap was in the stores before Halloween, and Target has smeared an ad campaign around the city for at least that long (a remarkable ad presence for a chain with only one location in town). The official opening of the xmas shopping season on the Mag Mile was Saturday. Yes, it's in the air, the Shittiest Time Of Year. Back in my day xmas was in December! I've been tracking it over the last few years, and it seems to creep forward by about two weeks a year. So, if the stores this year switched over in late October (allowing the official stuff to begin a mere week before Thanksgiving and thus appear conservative), that means it will take 20 years or so before xmas is year-round, though I predict it will never breach January because that's the post-xmas sale season. And why shouldn't it be year-round? If people bought year-round with the frenzy that they do in the last two months of the year, retailers could increase their sales by at least a factor of 10! That's the thought at least that puts xmas crap in the stores in October. But of course it won't work that way, it never does. The Golden Rule of marketing, after all, is that 97% of people will ignore you, 2% will hate you, and 1% will buy. It's that mentality, that search for the 1% of stimulus-response buyers, that has brought you the big pile of junk mail in your mailbox, the spam in your email inbox, the pop-ups on the page you're browsing, and that same damn commercial twice every commercial break during your show. And fucking xmas crap shoved in your face from October 20th until December 25th.
So it's time for me to go into hiding. Sorry, Simpsons, I can't even take a half an hour of TV any more. Not like football won't preempt you anyway. Sorry, restaurants, looks like I'll be eating ethnic food for the next month- or until you take that damn tinsel down. Sorry, stores, I won't be buying anything from you, not as a boycott (like I could oppose the crush of consuming), but just because your decor and piped-in music makes me want to retch.
There are two good things about xmas, though, and one of them is the fact that there are tons of opportunities to make a boatload of money on xmas day by working when everybody wants to be with their families. I've made $250 on xmas day- it's like the golden reward for putting up with the inescapable crap for three months (note that you could not pay me $250 a day to live in America after Halloween, so it's more of a consolation prize). The other is the chance to get dressed up like Santa and fuck shit up.
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